Duffel Bag

A stolen duffel bag with weapons stuffed inside was at the center of a car burglary caper in Boca Raton , according to a Boca police arrest report. The bag held a Glock pistol, three magazines of ammo, a hatchet and rope – and it didn't belong to the man police arrested. The incident happened Monday at about 12:40 a.m. in Mizner Park, when a witness saw someone toss the bag into the bushes. The man who had ditched the bag then ran off. Curious, the witness went down and got the bag. When he saw what was inside, he called police.

They had a taste for fashion, went only to designer stores, and never paid for the merchandise they selected, Sunrise police said. A trio of ex-convicts with long histories of thefts is accused of stealing nearly $40,000 in merchandise from the Sawgrass Mills mall. Carlos Enrique Taramona, 44, and Samantha Jesus, 24, are accused of methodically shoplifting from several stores in the mall, according to arrest reports. Alexander Rodriguez-Mulato, 24, was arrested Aug. 21 for the same crimes but has since bonded out of jail, records show.

He probably thought he had this one in the bag. But Jared Mustrat's plan to sneak his girlfriend into his sober house in a duffel bag Friday hit a snag when someone saw him and called police. It looked awfully suspicious: A man talking to a bag lying on the ground in a Boca Raton parking lot, pushing an arm that poked out back inside, then loading it into a car and driving off. According to a video from Boca Raton police spokesman, Mark Economou, detectives tracked down the Volkswagen five hours later, at about 10:30 p.m. But the couple said this wasn't a kidnapping, only part of their plan to get Mustrat's girlfriend, Jessica Tosi, into the Boca House, where Mustrat is staying.

You'll never clean up your act by using bleach to get even. After Quentin J. Jones was told by cops to leave a woman's place in the Panhandle, another man at the residence realized a duffel bag of his clothing worth about $500 had gone AWOL, according to an incident report, reports the Northwest Florida Daily News in Fort Walton Beach. Cops then found the clothes and the duffel bag, both ruined by bleach, in two nearby dumpsters, records show. Jones was jailed on a criminal mischief charge after cops spotted some evidence on him. Get the DUHtails at the Northwest Florida Daily News in Fort Walton Beach.

Broward county Customs agents at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport found an abandoned duffel bag filled with 90 pounds of cocaine on Thursday afternoon, officials said. Agents became suspicious when no one claimed the duffel bag on the luggage carousel 15 minutes after it was taken off a Lynx Air flight from Cape Haitian, Haiti. The flight had only five passengers and arrived at 2:45 p.m., said Special Agent Zach Mann, spokesman for the Customs Service. None of the passengers were believed to be responsible for the cocaine, which was packaged into 40 bricks with a street value of $736,000.

LIGHTHOUSE POINT - A gun, $400 and a duffel bag with clothes were stolen on Sept. 19 from a car parked in the 2500 block of Northeast 51st Street. Police recovered the duffel bag with the clothes still in it. They also recovered $1,200 worth of goods reported missing 10 minutes later from a rented van parked in the 2200 block of Northeast 43rd Street. An anonymous caller gave the location where police could find the goods. Two $400 televisions were stolen on Sept. 20 from two vans in the Sheehan Pontiac lot at 3000 N. Federal Highway, a police report shows.

Boaters found a duffel bag filled with 20 kilograms of cocaine floating near Lake Worth Inlet on Friday morning, U.S. Coast Guard officials said. The cocaine -- 20 individually wrapped one-kilo packages -- was swaddled in plastic and burlap and stuffed in a brown duffel bag, officials said. The packages had the letters "ARETE" (spanish for earring) printed in black marker on them. The drugs were found about 2 1/2 miles east of the inlet. No other packages were found. The cocaine was turned over to the U.S. Customs Service.

BOCA RATON -- A man escaped with $20,000 in jewelry after pulling a hammer from a duffel bag and smashing a glass display case at a card and gift store in the Fifth Avenue Shoppes, police said on Thursday. As store employees and a customer scurried for cover, the suspect ran out the front door of Best Wishes of Boca about 7:50 p.m. on Wednesday with two trays of rings he loaded into his duffel bag, police said. The suspect ran to the back of the shopping center at 20th Street and North Federal Highway, climbing a fence into Lake Wyman Park, witnesses reported.

You'll never clean up your act by using bleach to get even. After Quentin J. Jones was told by cops to leave a woman's place in the Panhandle, another man at the residence realized a duffel bag of his clothing worth about $500 had gone AWOL, according to an incident report, reports the Northwest Florida Daily News in Fort Walton Beach. Cops then found the clothes and the duffel bag, both ruined by bleach, in two nearby dumpsters, records show. Jones was jailed on a criminal mischief charge after cops spotted some evidence on him. Get the DUHtails at the Northwest Florida Daily News in Fort Walton Beach.

Members of what detectives call an organized theft ring were arrested this week, accused of stealing from Targets, Walmarts, Best Buys and other stores throughout South Florida. Justin Noel McCommon, 32, of Sunrise, is accused of stealing video cameras, headphones, digital cameras and other electronics mostly from the Target Superstore at 3599 W. Hillsboro Blvd. in Deerfield Beach, according to several arrest reports. John Anthony Miranti, 49, of Pompano Beach, was identified as the lookout and getaway driver.

A stolen duffel bag with weapons stuffed inside was at the center of a car burglary caper in Boca Raton , according to a Boca police arrest report. The bag held a Glock pistol, three magazines of ammo, a hatchet and rope – and it didn't belong to the man police arrested. The incident happened Monday at about 12:40 a.m. in Mizner Park, when a witness saw someone toss the bag into the bushes. The man who had ditched the bag then ran off. Curious, the witness went down and got the bag. When he saw what was inside, he called police.

A masked attacker crept up behind a manager seated in a restaurant office, then punched him in the head and robbed him at gunpoint, Pembroke Pines police say. The robbery happened March 29 at Burger and Beer Joint at 11025 Pines Blvd. The robber got into the business through a rear door and went to the manager's office. After punching the manager, the robber pointed a gun at him and demanded all cash in the office. The attacker then got away, leaving through the rear door. Pembroke Pines police are seeking the public's help to find the robber.

Fort Lauderdale Police are searching for at least two armed robbers who stole duffel bags full of electronics from a cellphone store Thursday. The Best Buy Mobile store, 1489 SE 17th St., that was robbed just before 11 a.m. was also robbed in July, police said. Surveillance video released by police Friday shows two gunmen standing over the store manager in a back office. The manager is on all fours opening a safe and getting keys to a storage closet before the video shows him lying face down on the floor while one suspect appears to be tying the manager's hands behind his back.

Two men were arrested in Boynton Beach Wednesday after police stopped a car and found a sawed-off shotgun on the back seat and a 4-gram bag marijuana in the passenger's sock, according to an arrest report. Fernando Medina, 19, was stopped while driving a Honda Civic on Northeast Second Street south of Northeast Sixth Avenue early Wednesday. Boynton Beach police officers had noticed the car's "extremely dark" tinted windows, which they described in the arrest report as an "obvious violation" of Florida laws governing the amount of tint that can be applied to windows.

A burglary suspect who claimed a December break-in was his first has been linked to another in October in the same Fort Lauderdale neighborhood, police said. Quavon Woodcock, 19, of Fort Lauderdale, was trying to negotiate his bail with the arresting officers shortly after he was caught Dec. 23, according to the arrest report. "This is my first charge and I don't know why I did this [expletive] today," Woodcock stated in the report. "I just had a baby. " After a call from a neighbor, Anthony Melbourne arrived home to find the suspect in his house in the 2700 block of Northwest 26th Street.

FORT LAUDERDALE Fort Lauderdale police have found an abandoned car they think was used in at least two armored car robberies in Hialeah and possibly others in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Police spokesman Mike Reed said the car was found in the 1100 block of Southwest Second Street in Fort Lauderdale, after a resident complained it seemed to have been left there. Two men were arrested on Wednesday after a traffic dispute, and police say the two might be linked to the armored robberies.

Just after noon, a robber wearing a gray suit and a fedora-style hat walked into a Plantation bank, said he had a bomb in his duffel bag and demanded cash, authorities said. The robber took the money and left the bag when he walked away from the bank at 400 N. Pine Island Road, police said. Plantation police evacuated the bank and some surrounding buildings as officials investigated the duffel bag, said Detective Phil Toman. No bomb was found, and no injuries were reported.

The hunt is on for a trio of robbers who held up a pawn shop with a hatchet and a semi-automatic handgun and got away with an undisclosed amount of jewelry, authorities said. In the hopes that the public might recognize those involved, police have released surveillance video of the Monday afternoon robbery showing the three men enter the Value Pawn at 6001 Duval St. one by one. The first man's role was to "distract the employees," said Lt. Osvaldo Perez, spokesman for the Hollywood Police Department.

After police arrested a 19-year-old man Monday morning who had ditched a duffel bag full of stolen items while fleeing a burglarized home, they recognized him from surveillance video recorded in October of another nearby break-in, police said. Upon arrest, Quavon A. Woodcock, of Lauderhill, admitted to a total of eight burglaries, Detective DeAnna Greenlaw, a spokeswoman for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, said. When police responded to an 11:15 a.m. call of a burglary in progress in the 2700 block of Northwest 26 t h Street, the homeowner, Anthony Melbourne, was chasing Woodcock, a police report said.